By John Kass

July 23, 2025

It was a cold Sunday morning in Chicago in February 2003—I was driving over to the paper, and had a week’s worth or columns to plan—when I stopped in front of the E2 nightclub. Outside there was a police blockade because 21 young people had been killed, but the cops knew me and waved me through.

On the sidewalk awkwardly alone, his hands jammed into the pockets of a navy-blue dress coat, was a soon-to-be well known Chicago Democrat:

Barack Obama.

The E2 was a black bougie hangout where 21 young people were crushed to death in a dark stairway that had been locked in violation of building codes. There had been a court order to close off the upper area but there was revenue to be had. So, it was kept open.

They had held fundraisers for Obama. The owners were Chicago Way friends of his, as was the oily bagman, Tony Rezko.

And I got a brief look into the cold emptiness of his soul.

Obama is all up in the news now, named in a “criminal information” sent by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard to the U.S. Justice Department for manufacturing treasonous official intelligence to portray President Donald Trump as a tool of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Naturally, the Deep State rats are scurrying and screeching to distract the people because it is all so serious, the Deep State having taken the republic from them right before their very eyes.

Naturally, the Democrats are now raving and raging to protect Obama, much as they screamed “racism” at anyone who dared mention Obama’s corrupt political bagman and imprisoned groundskeeper Tony Rezko.

This latest drama also involves Obama’s famous White House Oval Office meeting shortly after Trump shocked the Democrat world.

“On Jan. 5, 2017, with Obama World in panic after Trump shocked the political establishment by defeating Hillary Clinton for the presidency, Obama convened a White House meeting of his Deep State commanders. They had to stop Trump. John Brennan of Obama’s CIA was at that meeting, and then Vice President Biden. James Comey, then of the FBI, was there, as were national security adviser Susan Rice (who lied for the Obama White House about the Benghazi disaster) and other intelligence bosses.

What followed?

Chaos.

And out of that flowed the contrived Russia Collusion hoax that served the left wing corporate media as Pulitzer Prize vehicles for the Washington Post and New York Times, the Trump impeachments, the legacy media and the Democrat Party blackout of the Hunter Biden Laptop from Hell story that was blotted from the internet by the Obama Deep State in concert with Twitter and Facebook. And those shameless 51 American intelligence experts who insisted, falsely that the Hunter Biden laptop bore “all the hallmarks” of a Russian disinformation operation.

It’s all coming out now, isn’t it? The Deep State rats scurrying for cover, the terriers scratching at the rat holes.

On Tuesday, President Trump called on the Justice Department  to prosecute former President Barack Obama for allegedly ordering an assessment that Russia meddled to help him with the 2016 election.

At that so-called secret “by the book” meeting in the Oval Office, with Obama ordering his Deep State intelligence agencies to manufacture intel to cripple President Trump? Is he so shallow and narcissistic as to ignore the damage he causes to the republic as his spies and counterspies squeeze the civic life out of America? Yes.

He kills the republic he hates. And the institutional left that serves Obama, the universities and the broken corporate media guard Obama’s back.

“After what they did to me, whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people. Obama has been caught directly,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office. “If you look at those papers, they have them stone cold, and it was President Obama… the leader of the gang was President Obama, Barack Hussein Obama. Have you heard of him?”

Oh, one more thing about the phenomenon of Obama’s Deep State coup derailing the Trump administration:

You need the media. Without the media, it won’t work. But in Obama’s case, he had the American corporate news media eating from the palm of his hand.

As my younger brother Nicholas Kass explained in the American Conservative magazine before he cancelled his retirement and returned to government service–this time as acting Chairman of National Intelligence Council–a Deep States requires constant support from the media.

Trump withstood constant attack that would break most other men. It was an attack of the institutional insurrectionists who would destroy Trump and step on the Constitution to weaken and stop him. The left has already shot Trump once and tried to kill him twice. The Obamas, the Clintons have too much to lose.

But according to Susan Rice–in a cover her behind email written from the White House even as Trump was being sworn in as president–she insisted that everything in that Oval Office meeting was done “by the book. ”

Who talks like that unless it’s some grifter covering their behind?

She escaped further scrutiny, because, well, she was in the service of Obama. And she still is his servant. And she still covers his behind.

Certainly, Citizen Barack Obama understood how federal power could be abused as he lectured on the Constitution at the University of Chicago, not too far from where Chicago has given him priceless lakefront land—for his great temple.

Did President Obama worry about the republic when he convened that secret White House meeting on Jan. 5, 2017, just as Trump was about to take control?

No.

Years earlier, long before that “by the book” meeting in the White House, with those 21 black kids trampled to death in the illegally locked stairwell, Obama was exposing his soul on a cold streetcorner in Chicago.

There was nothing there.

I didn’t take notes. But I did ask him what he was doing. He pulled his hands from his pockets, saying he was torn up inside about the people who died. And he made helpless gestures with those thin hands of his.

“The owners are friends of mine,” he said of co-owners Calvin Hollins Jr. and Dwain Kyles, who escaped prison time in a deal with Emanuel administration attorneys and received community service. Emanuel had not yet served as Obama’s chief-of-staff and would later use that service as a springboard to become mayor of Chicago.

Obama did not have his mouthpieces. Emanuel wasn’t there. Neither was his puppet master David Axelrod. He was alone.

It seemed to me he was searching for some symbolism to build an escape ladder for another of his jazzy riffs. But his team wasn’t there. All of Chicago was torn up by the needless deaths of the young Chicagoans, the locked exits, that horrific trampling in the dark stairway. But butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.   He looked like a guy who was thinking about making a speech but didn’t have anything to say.

Across the street, TV news crews were gesturing at us, complaining to the cops about their access. They hadn’t yet recognized the still relatively unknown Obama, but they were coming over, angry.

So, I said something like: “Barack, in a few seconds they’ll walk over here and put a camera in your face and ask why you’re here. Do you want that now?

No, he said, sensing political danger.

“If I were you, I’d take off,” I said.

Yeah, he said, thanks. He took off.

The hollow man put his thin hands back into his pockets. And he loped away.

to be continued…

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About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

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